Ads on Wedding Cards and Selling Twitter Backgrounds

We're never short of newer advertising avenues, are we?

Staffing solutions company Teamlease comes up with an innovative idea of placing advertisements on wedding cards which they print for free! This Mint article has the details. Not only do you have your wedding cards being printed for free, but also have people find jobs along with your wedding. On top of that you're treating people with some delicious food during your wedding and the reception following it! What more social good can one do?!


While we're on things social, Ian Schafer, CEO of interactive marketing agency Deep Focus put his twitter background image and profile image on auction and the auction ended with Metacafe winning it with a bid of $1,082.01. Here's how his twitter page looks with the Metacafe branding



Earlier, there was the case of Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron auctioning his twitter account and then pulling out. Notable that the bid touched a price of $1,500 before he decided to pull out of the auction.

Conversation, did we say these are? These seem to come at a price though!

Courtesy: Ashish Tulsian for the TeamLease wedding card story and Valleywag(of all sources!) for the Ian Schafer piece.

You Are Watching the Big Brother

Location: Raheja Arcade, Near Forum Mall, Koramangala, Bangalore

Perhaps just a co-incidence that the agency connected with the big screen in the picture above is named Apple Media. Otherwise, the picture looks eerily similar to scenes from Apple's 1984 Commercial. With OOH advertising growing at such a big rate, looks like no matter how much we run or hide, the advertisers are going to get us, our eyes or our eyeballs rather!

Orkuting In Cyber Cafes Of Varanasi

Above photo taken on the streets of Varanasi.

Perhaps they should add Orkuting to the OED, at least in the Indian edition.

Why Gas Price Hike Won't Increase Auto Fares

Following the recent hike in prices of petrol, diesel and LPG, it is natural to expect an increase in auto rickshaw fares to ensure that the interests of the auto-wallahs are maintained. But look like increasing the fares isn't quite in their interest, going by what one heard from the auto-wallah last night.


Here was his logic -

Nodi saar, cutting tea elli sigatto alli hogi naavu tea kuDitheevi. Ondu angadi avanu cutting tea kododu band maadidre bere angadi ge hogtheevi. Ade thara naavoonu rate jaasti maadidre saamaanya jana auto bittu bus alli hoghtaare. Adakke rate jaasti maadidre namage loss-u. Duddu iravareno taxi alli hogthaare, aadre naavu rate jaasti maadidre auto alli baro jana ella bus alli hogthaare.



Rough translation -

Those who are well-off will anyway use taxis. If I want to drink tea I will only go to a shop which serves me cutting tea ( half a cup of tea) and if it stops serving it I will go to another shop which serves me cutting tea. Likewise, if we increase auto fares, the commoner who'd come with us would start commuting in buses.

Quite an interesting observation, no?!

Photo courtesy: rviswana

Truth About Youth - An MTV Study

Not yet. Turns out MTV is not going out of business because of every Tom, Mark and Steve and Chad turning into a content generator or building platforms for user generated content. A series of studies and research by MTV compiled into a book The State Of Cool, confirms mostly what is common knowledge and some insights into trends on youth culture, their usage of internet and mobile.

The State of Cool, a book published by MTV’s Insight Studio has a statistic that should set minds at ease only 1% of young visitors to user generated content sites actually upload anything fresh and original. 10% or less actively participate and leave comments, while 90% are passive spectators.

Ah, what about the Pareto Principle then? But 1% is way too less.

The importance of catching ‘em young is almost a cliché , but MTV states the market is more lucrative than ever before: youth across India spend up to Rs 9 billion in pocket money every day. A good deal of it on mobile phones and related services. Two years is the utility expectancy of a cell phone for 63% of young Indians; 57% of youth across Asia state that they’d like to replace their MP3 players with a music enabled mobile. The eagerness to add ringtones, music and games is good news for promoters of value added services.

No wonder every youth brand is chasing the youth these days. And their pockets are only going to swell in the days to come.

Indian youth are obsessive about keeping in touch, of which social networking is a huge component . 59% visit sites like MySpace almost every time they are online (see I-Generation ). India lags behind only Brazil in this sphere. As many as 69% of young Indians use these sites to chat with existing friends. 57% consider it an avenue to meet new people. It’s a de facto art gallery for 49% who share pictures. In India , Brazil and China, exclusively online friends beat close friends by a huge margin.

What Indian youth add to their mobile phones?

















What Indians use the internet most for?



















What Indians use the mobile most for?


















Source: This Economic Times article.

PS. Recommended reading - Chasing Cool.

How Will Social Sites Make Money?

From the DNA article - Ads give local networking sites the pass

Since the past 18 months, many local social sites such as Yaari, Minglebox, Bharatstudent, Desimartini, Ibibo, Indyarocks, BigAdda and Campus18 were launched ....

... The biggest challenge is the revenue model, which online marketers say is not easy to work out. Social networking, with around 20 million users in the country, hasn’t really proved a goldmine for advertisers as many may have liked to believe.

Page views, impressions and click-throughs — three metrics which online marketers swear by — haven’t yet adapted to the social networking environment in a manner that does not encroach upon user experience.

Absolutely. Pageviews, impressions and click-throughs as a way to measure user engagement with one's brand or product and her perception wouldn't doesn't quite click. Considering the existence of Natural Born Clickers.

So what's the solution? Perhaps, devising better metrics and integrating experiential elements into one's online campaign planning. Robert McLuhan has more in this article in Brand Republic.

Natural Born Clickers - More Clicks Not Equal To Better Brand Building

Findings from a new study by Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’ suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns .

..The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public.

Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

The study only bring to light the problem faced by marketers(if they are aware of it, that is) and the agencies helping them. action being tracked and metrics clearly defined, using the medium for purposes of brand-building and brand loyalty is a problem waiting to be solved.

More on the study here.